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Program Notes

Welcome to the Panama Hotel Tea Room. Thank you for coming
this afternoon. You are listening to (introduce band). We hope you enjoy today’s
performance.

The first piece was called “Panama Hotel” and was written
specifically for this concert. In fact, the whole musical program you will hear
today I composed for this event.

A few years ago I spoke with Jim Wilke, disk jockey for Jazz
After Hours. As we talked about Seattle
jazz history, he suggested I read Jamie Ford’s novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet because of the musical
scenes set on Jackson Street.
The book is a love story between a Chinese boy and Japanese girl in Seattle
around the beginning of World War II. A key token of their relationship is a
record of a fictitious jazz performance that gets stored in the basement of the
Panama Hotel.

So last year, the Panama Hotel was selected as a location
for site specific art funded by KingCounty.
I recalled the novel and the symbolic jazz record. I decided to learn what I
could about the history of the building and its role in the community. I also searched
Seattle’s jazz history to imagine
how the song stored in the Panama Hotel basement might have sounded.

I want to thank the owner of the Panama Hotel, Jan Johnson
and her staff, for hosting this series of concerts.

Thanks to Charlie Rathbun and the 4Culture Historic Site
Specific program for supporting this project so that it is free of charge.

Thanks for Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and Paul de Barros, author
of Jackson Street After Hours, for
their books which served as the initial sources for thematic material.

I want to thank the Holden family for their interest and
support of this project.

I want to acknowledge the thousands of Japanese Americans
who published their experiences and the many thousands more who have not.

As I researched for this project, I was overwhelmed by the
number and extent of stories published. You can see my bibliography online.
Today’s presentation is by no means a complete depiction of stories and events.
But I hope that it raises awareness about this historic building and its role
in our shared history.

The building was designed by Sabro Ozasa, the first Japanese
architect to practice in Seattle.
It was built in 1910 continuously operated as a hotel since the day it was
built. The first owners were Japanese umbrella organizations with non-Japanese
members as the publicly listed owners because Japanese were excluded from
property ownership. Takashi Hori bought the hotel in 1938 and operated it until
Jan Johnson purchased it in 1985. The basement contains the only intact
Japanese public bath or Sento left in the United
States. Many Japanese immigrants lived,
worked or were visitors in this building.

Rain
Drop Poem – sax, bass, vibes

During my research of Japanese esthetics practiced by
immigrants, what resonated with me is the desire for every person to infuse
daily tasks or common objects with art – to enhance the natural beauty of the world.
One story told of a Japanese American farmer who collected stones for his
garden. The extra stones he placed under the eaves of his house. When it rained
and no one could work outside, he called everyone in to create poetry to the
sound of rain falling on the stones. The next piece I titled “Poem.”

Nihonmachi
– piano, guitar, trumpet

Immigrants have been part of Seattle
ever since the Denny party landed here in 1851. The land south of Yesler
Street and the filled in tidal flats of the DuwamishRiver became home for much of Seattle’s
non-white population. Chinese, attracted by the possibility of finding gold on
the West Coast, immigrated in the late 1800’s. In fact, they called America
“GoldMountain.”
They dug mines, built railroads, milled lumber, and canned salmon. Racial
discrimination led to a federal Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 that suspended
immigration and prevented American citizenship. Then local government forbade
Chinese from owning property. Riots broke out in Seattle
to ship all Chinese to San Francisco.
The violent protests led the state governor and U.S. President to declare
martial law in Seattle.

Japanese came to fill the labor shortage but were stopped by
the Immigration Act of 1924. Then, groups of Filipinos and African Americans came
to Seattle.

The Panama Hotel is located at the heart of Seattle’s
Nihonmachi, or Japan
town. Since the 1920’s, Main Street
between 4th and 7th Avenues, and businesses on a few
nearby streets, provided all the services the Japanese American community needed.
Japanese businesses also extended beyond Nihonmachi. In 1940, even though
Japanese were only 2 percent of Seattle’s
population, they operated 63 percent of the greenhouses, 63 percent of the
hotels and apartments, 45 percent of the restaurants, and 17 percent of the
groceries.

This piece is called “Nihonmachi.”

Alley
Cat Strut – sax, trumpet, vibes

Jazz flourished in Seattle’s
non-white neighborhoods. Nightlife on Jackson Street
fostered diversity. In 1933, the newspaper Northwest Enterprise described the scene. “Here all
races meet on common ground and rub elbows as equals. Fillipinos [sic],
Japanese, Negros and whites mingle in the same hotels
and restaurants and there is an air of comradeship.” Traveling jazz musicians
like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Billie Holiday stayed in hotels and ate
at restaurants here because they would not be served in other parts of the
city.

Jazz musicians wrote music about Seattle.
Pianist Jelly Roll Morton performed at the Entertainers Club at 12th
and Main in the 1920s and wrote a song called “Seattle
Hunch,” perhaps in tribute to his notorious gambling. Ray Charles wrote
“Rocking Chair Blues” after the Rocking Chair club at 14th and
Yesler and he played at the Black Elks club a block away from here on Jackson
Street.

In Jamie Ford’s novel Hotel
on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Seattle
jazz musicians perform and record a song called “Alley Cat Strut” dedicated to
the two main characters. Although this is an imaginary song created by the
author as a device in his book, I took the liberty of imagining how it might
have sounded.

Desert
– guitar, piano, sax

The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941
changed Nihonmachi forever. Within a 24 hours, Japanese born men were taken to
the Immigration Office just south of Dearborn Street.
Some were sent to military camps. FBI agents confiscated items from Japanese
American homes. Japanese American families shed things that displayed loyalty
to Japan. Families
destroyed items linked to Japan
- dolls, books, records, and family photographs.

In
a book titled Looking Like the Enemy: My
Story of Imprisonment in Japanese-American Internment Camps, Mary Matsuda
Gruenewald tells the following story.

"We stood in front of the table looking at all of our
cultural treasures. Papa-san took a deep breath and said, 'This is it. Let's
get this difficult task done.' He picked up the first phonograph record, read
the label and said to Mama-san, 'This one, 'Sakura,' is my favorite.
Yoshiko-san's voice is so clear and beautiful and the words evoke such feeling
in me.' With doleful eyes he handed it to Mama-san who also read the label.
With teary eyes she broke it into small pieces, stepped over to the stove and
slipped it into the flames. One by one they looked over each record and took
turns reading them, silently feeding their beloved music into the stove until
every record was destroyed. The flames illuminated my parent's sad but
determined faces."

President Franklin Roosevelt issued an Executive Order that
allowed the military to designate areas that would exclude people of Japanese
ancestry. With no criminal charges or evidence of espionage, 120,000 Japanese
Americans, two thirds of whom were born in America
and thus citizens, were sent to AssemblyCenters and a few months later to 10
camps in desolate locations. The personal items that they couldn’t take with
them or sell were stored in places like the Panama Hotel basement. When
arriving at camp, many described the barren landscape, desert heat, dust
storms, barbed wire, and sentry towers.

KimiGa Yo – bass, vibes, guitar

The Japanese national anthem “Kimi Ga Yo,” while patriotic,
can also be seen as a metaphor for personal endurance. Roughly translated the
lyrics say,

"May thy peaceful reign last long.
May it last for thousands of years,
Until this tiny stone will grow
Into a massive rock, and the moss
Will cover it deep and thick."

Endurance meant survival for Japanese Americans. Endurance
of misunderstanding, endurance of discrimination, endurance of injustice,
endurance of hardship, endurance of hatred.

Loyalty
– trumpet, sax

The U.S.
government assumed that familial piety was paramount for all Japanese
Americans. With suspicion that elder Japanese Americans were loyal to the
Japanese Empire, cultural deference and respect for one’s parents brought into
question the perceived allegiance to this country.

In an attempt to distinguish loyal from disloyal, the government
required every inmate over 17 years old to answer two questions while they were
imprisoned.

First, "Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of
the United States
on combat duty wherever ordered?" The average age of first generation Japanese
American immigrant was 54. Answering “yes” was inconceivable.

The second question asked, "Will you swear unqualified
allegiance to the United States of America
and faithfully defend the United States
from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of
allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, or any other foreign
government, power, or organization?" Japanese born inmates were not
permitted to become American citizens by law so answering “yes” to forswearing
allegiance to Japan
would leave them stateless. Children answering differently than parents might
separate families.

How can one pledge allegiance to a government that denies
citizenship to immigrants, restricts civil rights based on race, assumes guilt
by association, and incarcerates citizens without charging them with a crime?

Family
– piano, vibes

Japanese American families did what they could to support
one another. The Seattle born and educated architect Minoro Yamasaki, who would
later design the World Trade Center in New York, had his parents join him in
his East Coast apartment to avoid incarceration. Deems’ father George
Tsutakawa, whose sculpture stands a block away, met his future wife while he
visited family in a camp. Takashi Hori, who owned the Panama Hotel, was the
first to be allowed to return to Seattle
from camp without an escort. He and his brother came back to the Panama Hotel
for a week in September of 1944 to sort through items in the basement and ship
things back to families at the Minidoka camp in Hunt, Idaho.

But camp life eroded familial bonds. Takashi Hori told the
Seattle Times in 1944, “Camp life is a terrible thing, just as it would be for
anyone. What you miss most is the home life. It isn’t normal to be crowded
together with hundreds of other people.” Mess hall meals, abundant free time,
fathers separated from families, and little or no privacy damaged the
traditional Japanese family structure.

Affirmation
– sax, trumpet

There are many negative lessons of how people treat each
other during war. But I find inspiring some positive examples of those who
experienced injustice. I admire the value of thoughtful planning, patience,
restraint, faith, and hope. This piece is titled “Affirmation.”

Densho
– bass, guitar

A common thread through many Japanese American stories is
the desire to provide for the next generation. A Japanese term for legacy is
“Densho.” An organization called Densho, run by Tom Ikeda, is collecting oral
histories from those who were incarcerated to advocate for equity. You can hear
and see more than 700 of these stories online. This piece is called “Densho.”

Mending
– vibes

Before we perform our last song, I want to thank you again
for coming. We will perform here every Saturday until the 3rd
Saturday in September, but not on Labor Day weekend. You are welcome to come
back and please tell your friends.

We will be recording this music in early September and if
you are interested in getting a copy, please give me your email address so I
can let you know when it becomes available.

Once again, you are listening to…

Over time, the American government has acknowledged its
injustice. Over 40 years after the war ended, a government commission, finding
scant evidence of Japanese disloyalty, recommended payment of $20,000 for each
camp survivor. President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that apologized on
behalf of the U.S.
government for actions based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and failure of
political leadership.” President George H.W. Bush apologized again on the 50th
anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing. The City of Seattle
paid $5,000 to municipal employees that had been unjustly dismissed. WashingtonState supported the Seattle School
Board’s reparations to 27 Japanese American citizens who were forced to resign
as clerks for Seattle Public Schools.